Mbalula defends Malatji, says ANCYL a ‘necessary irritation that must not be censored’

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has defended the president of the ANC Youth League, Collen Malatji, after he criticised Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi for not creating jobs.

Malatji publicly criticised Nxesi during his closing address at the second leg of the ANC Youth League’s 26th national congress over the weekend in the Free State. He said Nxesi appeared to be the “minister of unemployment” and should be removed.

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This came shortly after Mbalula called for the Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan to move with speed or risk being moved.

Malatji said: “We are no longer going to delegate this responsibility to pensioners. The responsibility to take this country forward is upon us, but you can’t do that if you have no solutions.

“That Thulas Nxesi, who is the minister of employment, appears like he is minister of unemployment. I don’t know when we are removing him, but it’s an urgent matter.”

“The president of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa, responding to the issue of unemployment, employed a minister of employment who is becoming a minister of unemployment. That minister is not responding to the practical issues the youth wants to speak about.”

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Responding to Malatji’s remarks, the party said in a statement that it did not encourage insults towards party members.

Mbalula: ANCYL not wrong

Mbalula, however, defended the youth league and said it was a “necessary irritation” that should not be censored.

“If the youth league or Sasco say there is a problem of unemployment, they must be able to back it up and say that the government is failing us on this issue. Even if they say that in public, there is nothing wrong,” he said.

“What is important is that they advance their argument. Sasco fights bigger battles in the campuses of Nsfas and make comrade Blade [Nzimande] sweat.

“They need to engage but equally they represent a constituency that is restless. They too are affected, they are leaders of students, and they are free to engage with them.”

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He said the ANC may sometimes not see things that young people see, further calling on the younger generation to provide ideas that will solve the issues they are facing.

“Ideas are not about insults, it is about the revolution to say to that comrade, ‘you are selling out the revolution for the following reasons’. We do not expect our youth to always be on the right path, but we have got to share with them our experiences of the past. We can not suppress them because decency is necessary,” Mbalula said.

ANCYL led by ANC

“All that we were raising as the ANC is that there is no need to attack a comrade personally. When I said Pravin must move, I didn’t say personal things about him, I was attacking the content of government infrastructure on the issue of logistics and freight and implementing the policy of the ANC from moving goods from road to rail.”

“We do not believe the youth league is incorrect and that is why we said it is a bit regrettable that you now go and say a comrade is a yellow communist and isolate him from the pack and attack him.”

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He said the ANCYL needed to raise the issue that they thought the department was not executing in the context of the policy of the government of the ANC.

“The youth league is led by the ANC, it doesn’t invent its own policy. If they go into meetings and discuss that for us to move faster we need this intervention in terms of the policy, they must sell it to the ANC.”